1661
year
1661 (MDCLXI) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar, the 1661st year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 661st year of the 2nd millennium, the 61st year of the 17th century, and the 2nd year of the 1660s decade. As of the start of 1661, the Gregorian calendar was 10 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.
Events
January–March
January 6 – The Fifth Monarchists, led by Thomas Venner, unsuccessfully attempt to seize control of London; George Monck's regiment defeats them.
January 29 – The Rokeby baronets, a British nobility title is created.
January 30 – The body of Oliver Cromwell is exhumed and subjected to a posthumous execution in London, along with those of John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton.
February 5 – The Shunzhi Emperor of the Chinese Qing Dynasty dies, and is succeeded by his 7-year-old son the Kangxi Emperor.
February 7 – Shah Shuja, who was deprived of his claim to the throne of the Mughal Empire by his younger brother Aurangzeb, then fled to Burma, is killed by Indian troops in an attack on his residence at Arakan.
February 14 – George Monck’s regiment becomes The Lord General's Regiment of Foot Guards in England (which later becomes the Coldstream Guards).
March 9 – Following the death of his mentor, Cardinal Jules Mazarin, who had been Minister of State since before the birth of King Louis XIV, King Louis, now 22, starts to rule independently without need for a regent.
March 23 – General Zheng Chenggong of China, known as "Koxinga" leads an invasion of the island of Taiwan, at the time under the control of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), bringing 25,000 soldiers and sailors on hundreds of boats to claim the territory.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “1661” as year. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as year. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7005. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1661 and 1923.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
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- Expand the search: follow 1661 primary sources, 1661 archive and year research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “1661” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.